Affiliated scholar biography - Katy Stavreva
For Katy Stavreva, Associate Professor of English, reading the literature of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance is all about attending to the matter of the text: its aural qualities, the insights offered by manuscript or early printed editions, the impact of literature on contemporary readers and artists and on subsequent generations. Her students at Cornell College learn to howl with the passion of Shakespeare’s lovers in short sketches and full-length productions of the plays that they study. They beat out the menacing rhythm of Queen Elizabeth’s poetic assault against conspirators. They interweave analyses of visual art and poetry as they interpret, say, Blake’s illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy or produce their own illuminated manuscript “reflectories” on the poem.
As scholar and teacher of Shakespeare, she often focuses on the breathing of literary expression into public life. Speech of such heightened materiality can be threatening and downright destructive, as in the witch-speak, defamation, and prophetic utterances wielded by historical women and by female characters in English Renaissance plays – the core of Stavreva’s award-winning research. It is also a powerful means to foster community and shape historical memory.
Learning about misdirection at Torre Guinigi (the Guinigi Tower) in Lucca.
Professor Stavreva holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Iowa and has received postdoctoral fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Newberry Library, and the British Academy, as well as Cornell College and the ACM. But her exploration of the literature and culture of pre-modern Europe began in earnest with an undergraduate Honors thesis on Sir Philip Sidney and John Donne at Sofia University in her native Bulgaria. Crossing the Iron Curtain, she conducted her thesis research as a study abroad student at the University of Sussex in the U.K.
On her way West, she found the allure of Venice irresistible, and had to re-visit La Serenissima on her way back, vowing to return to Italy again. She was eventually able to do this in the summer of 2009, when she was selected to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Dante, conducted in Tuscany (Prato, Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Ravenna). A joyful and mind-expanding experience, the seminar allowed for a complete immersion into Dante’s words and worlds – historical, religious, artistic, musical, and (in the eyes of a Shakespearean) very, very theatrical. Professor Stavreva is thrilled to be able to help guide ACM students through the worlds of Dante and Italian story-tellers from Boccaccio to Italo Calvino, in Magnificent Florence.